By Josh Bookbinder
Everyone’s heard about Trea Turner’s 2023 in one way or another. Whether it’s his early-season struggles, or his miraculous turnaround powered by the City of Brotherly Love’s support, or something else, Trea was all over the news throughout the season.
Everyone’s also heard about the revitalization of stolen bases thanks to the new rules that MLB pushed out in 2023. Everyone heard about Ronald Acuña becoming the first ever 40/70 player (and 40/60, and 40/50). Lots of people heard about Corbin Carroll’s amazing season in the box and the basepaths (thanks in no small part to Foolish Baseball’s work). Many people even heard about Esteury Ruiz’s 67-stolen base rookie season, which is the highest rookie stolen base total since before the turn of the millennium.
Credit: SI.com.
The perfect thief himself.
It’s understandable that no one would think twice about Turner’s 15th-place ranking on the stolen bases leaderboard. But amid his offensive struggles and resurgence, amid the blazing seasons of his peers, Trea Turner did something nobody else did: he broke the all-time record for stolen bases without being caught.
One of my personal favorite tables to look at is the Run Expectancy Matrix, or the probability that a run is scored based off of the number of outs and the runners on base. For example, in the 2022 version published by Pitcherlist below, if there was a runner on third and one out, a team could expect to score on average 0.974 runs.
From there, math can be done to determine when and how the value of a stolen base breaks even with the penalty for being thrown out. From the same Pitcherlist source, here’s that matrix for 2022, as well as 2016-2021 (excl. 2020).
As a coach who loves to be aggressive on the basepaths, I love watching a player wreak havoc and cause problems. I especially love to see someone be smart while they’re doing it. Turner was a joy to watch run the bases this year, no matter what else was going on with him at the time.
Turner undoubtedly provided a lot of value on the basepaths with his stolen base rate this year. He’s the only person since 1951 to steal 30 bases without being caught; next best is fellow Phillie Chase Utley with 23 in 2009.
Credit: Reddit
Fangraphs still didn’t feel Turner’s historic run (literally) was as worth it as it may seem; their baserunning runs metric had him ranked 8th last year. However, he provided a ton of value, and if you’ll allow me to be old-school for a minute, was constantly in pitchers’ heads, which may have contributed to some solid seasons at the dish by his teammates who batted after him. I think the value of his feat, while well-regarded by the “nerd” stats, was probably even more than it was given credit for in those analytic circles.
Personally, I think Turner’s accomplishment deserves a lot of love. It’s tough to steal bases at the big league level, as we saw for many years with the declining rates. It took MLB stepping in to push levels back to where they needed to be, creating action and excitement in an area of the game that isn’t power-focused, but instead speed-focused. And Trea Turner took better advantage than anyone, from a certain point of view. Untouched in his pursuit of thievery, one could argue he was the most impressive thing to grace basepaths in 2023, a year of many fast feats.
Trea pulled off the perfect crime for all of 2023.
Josh Bookbinder is a writer for and co-founder of LowThreeQuarter. See more of his work and others’ work on the site through the links at the top of the page, or explore another recent article linked below.
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